Drawing on Jen Alexandra's practice-led inquiry into the embodied, often unspoken methods artists use to make work, this workshop explores what Jen calls intuitive technologies: the gestures, rituals, and relational ways of knowing artists accumulate but rarely name. It looks specifically at scent as re-presencing. Through open-ended making activities, participants are invited to respond to scent as a catalyst for making. Underpinning the workshop is a conviction that creative making is a quietly radical act against productivity-driven capitalism.

About the Artist

Jen Alexandra’s practice combines sculpture, installation and performance to explore the artists role as querent, and the relationships between human and non-human. She proposes that art can connect with other realms of experience, interpret visions, or serve as a mode of knowledge itself.

Objects, floating ontologically as artefacts and channels for intention, act as transitional objects between places. For Jen, folklore, nature-based worship and seasonal lore are ways to understand notions of spirit through studio-focused intuitive technologies approaching the unseen and spiritual as both a platform and tool for expanding understanding of creative practice and acts of devotion.

About CoCA

CoCA Toi Moroki is a leading art gallery in Ōtautahi Christchurch governed by the Canterbury Society of Arts Charitable Trust (CSA). Our vision is to create a thriving home for art and culture in Waitaha, igniting connections between artists and community. We fulfil this by offering free exhibitions and events that invite our Waitaha community to explore contemporary art.

More information about Scented Translations

Scented Translations is on in our Ō Papa Gallery from 3 October to 9 November 2026.

Photo Credit Sarah Rowlands

Contact the host of What are Intuitive Technologies? With Jen Alexander

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